Maine Legislature Passes Landmark Bill on Alternative Lyme Disease Treatments

Good news comes to Lyme disease patients living in New England -- the legislature of Maine has passed a bill that gives way more options to patients suffering from the disease. As The Global Dispatch reports:

A Lyme disease bill, which would require the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to link to alternative treatments for the bacterial disease, passed both houses of the Maine legislature this week and now goes to the desk of Gov. Paul LePage.

The bill, LD 597, directs the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to include on its publicly accessible website information about different alternatives for the treatment of Lyme disease. The bill also requires the center to include information about treatment guidelines recommended by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which represents physicians, scientists and other health care professionals who specialize in infectious diseases.

The Maine CDC currently only links to the IDSA website, an organization where many physicians go to for treatment guidelines, which don’t recognize chronic Lyme as a condition or support long-term antibiotic treatment for the disease.

The original bill sponsored by Rep. Sheryl Briggs, D-Mexico went a step further saying:  A negative result for a Lyme disease test does not necessarily mean that Lyme disease is not present and if symptoms continue, the patient should contact a health care provider and inquire about the appropriateness of retesting or additional treatment. However, Briggs amended bill ended up requiring the health care provider to give a patient a copy of the results of a Lyme disease test.

Read more here.